“Are you busy?” Her voice was raspy and serious. “I need to talk to you.”
He sat up straighter. “I’m never too busy for you, Lola. What’s going on?”
A heavy pause. And then, “It isn’t working between us.”
The blood in his veins ran ice-cold. “Baby—” He tried to swallow, but his tongue was a deadweight in his mouth. “I don’t understand—”
“It’s not working, Darien.” Her voice was a harsh whisper. “Me and you—us.We shouldn’t be doing this.”
The hand Darien ran through his hair trembled. “Loren. Sweetheart.” There was a fucking lump in his throat—a hand squeezing his vocal cords. “Can we please—”
A sob rattled the phone. “It’s notworking,Darien! Why can’t you just accept that? Even you said you can’t keep me safe—you weren’t able to keep me safe from this—” There was a muffled thud in the background.
Darien’s breaths were rapid and shallow. “Can we talk about this in person?”
“I’m sorry, Darien.”
“Baby,please—”
The phone beeped as she disconnected the call. The phone felt heavy in his hand as he kept it glued to his ear, his lungs tightening as he forced himself to keep breathing; to not pulverize the phone in his grip.
He needed to hit something. Badly.
The next target—the gangster worth fifty thousand gold mynet… Darien was going to break that piece of shit apart, bone by fucking bone.
The phone began ringing in his hand, and he answered with a flat, “What.”
“This a bad time?” came the gravelly voice of the Butcher.
“Not unless you have a set of teeth that I can punch down someone’s fucking throat.”
“You’re a grouchy son of a bitch.” The Butcher chuckled. “Meet me at the Iron Dock at half-past—and don’t be late.” The Butcher hung up.
Throwing his phone onto the dash, Darien nearly ripped the emergency break off as he lowered it and peeled out onto the street, his grip on the wheel so tight the molding groaned. He flew through stop signs and red lights, tires screeching and horns blaring from every direction, as something inside him he hadn’t known existed snapped and splintered.
—
Try as he may, Darien couldn’t uncurl his hands from tight fists as he strode across the Iron Dock. The rotting wood groaned and sank beneath his every step. Gulls perched upon buoys, squawking out tuneless songs.
The Butcher was waiting at the end of the wharf, the hem of his ankle-length trench-coat flapping in the wind. Ramshackle boats were tied to wooden posts, where they bobbed and dipped in the choppy waves. Although the wind was warm for late-Decem, Darien felt cold, his heart a chunk of ice in his chest.
He should’ve known better than to let this happen. Loren deserved someone who would give her the kind of life a good girl like her was born for—a safe and happy life. It was only a matter of time—it hadalwaysbeen only a matter of time before she realized how wrong he was for her. He’d only hoped it might’ve lasted longer than this—longer than the pathetic few days he’d had with her in which he’d been able to call her his own.
The Butcher turned to face him, cigar hanging from his lips. He made a show of glancing at his bare wrist. “You’re late.”
“Get to the point,” Darien said. “Unless you’d like to become that set of teeth I was talking about.”
Wind swept the ashes off the end of the cigar as Casen smiled, yellowed teeth digging into the moist end. “You’re a sick son of a bitch, you know that? I’ve never seen anyone fight like you. You should come to the Block more often; people will pay good money to watch the slaughters if they know you’re playing.”
“Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer,” Darien crooned, “if you get to the point and stop wasting my time.”
The Butcher waved a giant hand. “Alright, alright.” He flicked the cigar to the dock and squished it flat beneath his peeling boot. “Thought you might like to know that little tip you got from Boyd a while back was off just a tad. Chrysantha wasn’t selling for me or any competition I have; she wasbuying.Fromme.”
Darien stiffened. “And none of your people recognized Shadowback’s sister,how?”
“Some witch or warlock must’ve glamoured her. I only figured it out after I realized the deal was done in sight of a highway cam. When my boys were trashing the evidence, I saw therealher—it was Shadowback’s sister, no doubt about that.”
“Any idea who she was buying for?”
